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The Van Cliburn Foundation has named conductor Leonard Slatkin chair of the jury for the 2017 Van Cliburn International Competition, to be held in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall. Slatkin also will conduct the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in the final concerto round of the competition, but he will abstain from voting in that round. Slatkin previously conducted the FWSO in the 2013 Cliburn Competition.

With a long and notable career, Slatkin is currently music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lyon in France.

Slatkin succeeds John Giordano, who served a jury chair for four decades, starting in 1973.

The music world has been all abuzz over Benjamin Ivry’s Wall Street Journal piece on the Cliburn: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458728669699751.html.

I found it obnoxious, and inaccurate.

Having covered every note of the 16-day contest, I note that Mr. Ivry nowhere says that he actually attended the competition. If he did, the Cliburn press staff was unaware of it. If his conclusions are based on the webcasts, he should say so. Because of logistical problems, I had to review one of Di Wu’s solo recitals via the webcast, and was so aware of its shortcomings for judging tone quality and more that I felt obliged to say so in print.

Mr. Ivry doesn’t even get his facts straight. He says John Giordano “leads” the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, even though he was succeeded nine years ago by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. He identifies the Takács Quartet as “from Hungary” although only two of its original Hungarian musicians remain, and the group has been in residence at the University of Colorado since 1983.

What Mr. Ivry describes as the “mediocre” and “dispiriting” FWSO was playing under conditions that would rattle the Berlin Philharmonic: accompanying relatively inexperienced players with wildly different conceptions in long days and nights of multiple rehearsals and performances. I was impressed that the orchestra did as well as it did. The arrangement even required special dispensation from the American Federation of Musicians, which normally would never agree to such working conditions. Having heard the FWSO steadily for the last 10 years, I can vouch for its high standards under normal circumstances.

I share some of Mr. Ivry’s reservations with gold medalist Nobuyuki Tsujii. But plenty of us, not just on the jury, would not agree with his obsession with Di Wu as “the most musically mature and sensitive” competitor. My own vote would go to Haochen Zhang, who did get the other gold medal.